The Village Watch-Tower

Tom had fled from captivity for the third time.

He had stolen out at daybreak, and, by an unexpected stroke of fortune, the molasses pail was hanging on a nail by the shed door. The remains of a battered old bushel basket lay on the wood-pile: bottom it had none, nor handles; rotundity of side had long since disappeared, and none but its maker would have known it for a basket. Tom caught it up in his flight, and, seizing the first crooked stick that offered, he slung the dear familiar burden over his shoulder and started off on a jog-trot.

Heaven, how happy he was! It was the rosy dawn of an Indian summer day,—a warm jewel of a day, dropped into the bleak world of yesterday without a hint of beneficent intention; one of those enchanting weather surprises with which Dame Nature reconciles us to her stern New England rule.

The joy that comes of freedom, and the freedom that comes of joy, unbent the old man’s stiffened joints. He renewed his youth at every mile. He ran like a lapwing. When his feet first struck the sandy soil of the plains, he broke into old song of the “bloom-in’ gy-ar-ding” and the “jolly swain,” and in the marvelous mental and spiritual exhilaration born of the supreme moment he almost grasped that impossible last note. His heard could hardly hold its burden of rapture when he caught the well-known gleam of the white birches. He turned into the familiar path, boy’s blood thumping in old man’s veins. The past week had been a dreadful dream. A few steps more and he would be within sight, within touch of home,—home at last! No—what was wrong? He must have gone beyond it, in his reckless haste! Strange that he could have forgotten the beloved spot! Can lover mistake the way to sweetheart’s window? Can child lose the path to mother’s knee?

He turned,—ran hither and thither, like one distraught. A nameless dread flitted through his dull mind, chilling his warm blood, paralyzing the activity of the moment before. At last, with a sob like that of a frightened child who flies from some imagined evil lurking in darkness, he darted back to the white birches and started anew. This time he trusted to blind instinct; his feet knew the path, and, left to themselves, they took him through the tangle of dry bushes straight to his—

It had vanished!

Nothing but ashes remained to mark the spot,—nothing but ashes! And these, ere many days, the autumn winds would scatter, and the leafless branches on which they fell would shake them off lightly, never dreaming that they hid the soul of a home. Nothing but ashes!

Poor Tom o’ the blueb’ry plains!

THE NOONING TREE

The giant elm stood in the centre of the squire’s fair green meadows, and was known to all the country round about as the “Bean ellum.” The other trees had seemingly retired to a respectful distance, as if they were not worthy of closer intimacy; and so it stood alone, king of the meadow, monarch of the village.

It shot from the ground for a space, straight, strong, and superb, and then bust into nine splendid branches, each a tree in itself, all growing symmetrically from the parent trunk, and casting a grateful shadow under which all the inhabitants of the tiny village might have gathered.

It was not alone its size, its beauty, its symmetry, its density of foliage, that made it the glory of the neighborhood, but the low grown of its branches and the extra-ordinary breadth of its shade. Passers-by from the adjacent towns were wont to hitch their teams by the wayside, crawl through the stump fence and walk across the fields, for a nearer view of its magnificence. One man, indeed, was known to drive by the tree every day during the summer, and lift his hat to it, respectfully, each time he passed; but he was a poet and his intellect was not greatly esteemed in the village.

The elm was almost as beautiful in one season as in another. In the spring it rose from moist fields and mellow ploughed ground, its tiny brown leaf buds bursting with pride at the thought of the loveliness coiled up inside. In summer it stood in the midst of a waving garden of buttercups and whiteweed, a towering mass of verdant leafage, a shelter from the sun and a refuge from the storm; a cool, splendid, hospitable dome, under which the weary farmer might fling himself, and gaze upward as into the heights and depths of an emerald heaven. As for the birds, they made it a fashionable summer resort, the most commodious and attractive in the whole country; with no limit to the accommodations for those of a gregarious turn of mind, liking the advantages of select society combined with country air. In the autumn it held its own; for when the other elms changed their green to duller tints, the nooning tree put on a gown of yellow, and stood out against the far background of sombre pine woods a brilliant mass of gold and brown. In winter, when there was no longer dun of upturned sod, nor waving daisy gardens, nor ruddy autumn grasses, it rose above the dazzling snow crust, lifting its bare, shapely branches in sober elegance and dignity, and seeming to say, “Do not pity me; I have been, and, please God, I shall be!”

Whenever the weather was sufficiently mild, it was used as a “nooning” tree by all the men at work in the surrounding fields; but it was in haying time that it became the favorite lunching and “bangeing” place for Squire Bean’s hands and those of Miss Vilda Cummins, who owned the adjoining farm. The men congregated under the spreading branches at twelve o’ the clock, and spent the noon hour there, eating and “swapping” stories, as they were doing to-day.

Each had a tin pail, and each consumed a quantity of “flour food” that kept the housewives busy at the cook stove from morning till night. A glance at Pitt Packard’s luncheon, for instance, might suffice as an illustration, for, as Jabe Slocum said, “Pitt took after both his parents; one et a good deal, ‘n’ the other a good while.” His pail contained four doughnuts, a quarter section of pie, six buttermilk biscuits, six ginger cookies, a baked cup custard, and a quart of cold coffee. This quantity was a trifle unusual, but every man in the group was lined throughout with pie, cemented with buttermilk bread, and riveted with doughnuts.

Jabe Slocum and Brad Gibson lay extended slouchingly, their cowhide boots turned up to the sky; Dave Milliken, Steve Webster, and the others leaned back against the tree-trunk, smoking clay pipes, or hugging their knees and chewing blades of grass reflectively.

One man sat apart from the rest, gloomily puffing rings of smoke into the air. After a while he lay down in the grass with his head buried in his hat, sleeping to all appearances, while the others talked and laughed; for he had no stories, though he put in an absent-minded word or two when he was directly addressed. This was the man from Tennessee, Matt Henderson, dubbed “Dixie” for short. He was a giant fellow,—a “great gormin’ critter,” Samantha Ann Milliken called him; but if he had held up his head and straightened his broad shoulders, he would have been thought a man of splendid presence.

He seemed a being from another sphere instead of from another section of the country. It was not alone the olive tint of the skin, the mass of wavy dark hair tossed back from a high forehead, the sombre eyes, and the sad mouth,—a mouth that had never grown into laughing curves through telling Yankee jokes,—it was not these that gave him what the boys called a “kind of a downcasted look.” The man from Tennessee had something more than a melancholy temperament; he had, or physiognomy was a lie, a sorrow tugging at his heart.

“I’m goin’ to doze a spell,” drawled Jabe Slocum, pulling his straw hat over his eyes. “I’ve got to renew my strength like the eagle’s, ‘f I’m goin’ to walk to the circus this afternoon. Wake me up, boys, when you think I’d ought to sling that scythe some more, for if I hev it on my mind I can’t git a wink o’ sleep.”

This was apparently a witticism; at any rate, it elicited roars of laughter.

“It’s one of Jabe’s useless days; he takes ‘em from his great-aunt Lyddy,” said David Milliken.

“You jest dry up, Dave. Ef it took me as long to git to workin’ as it did you to git a wife, I bate this hay wouldn’t git mowed down to crack o’ doom. Gorry! ain’t this a tree! I tell you, the sun ‘n’ the airth, the dew ‘n’ the showers, ‘n’ the Lord God o’ creation jest took holt ‘n’ worked together on this tree, ‘n’ no mistake!”

“You’re right, Jabe.” (This from Steve Webster, who was absently cutting a D in the bark. He was always cutting D’s these days.) “This ellum can’t be beat in the State o’ Maine, nor no other state. My brother that lives in California says that the big redwoods, big as they air, don’t throw no sech shade, nor ain’t so han’some, ‘specially in the fall o’ the year, as our State o’ Maine trees; ‘assiduous trees,’ he called ‘em.”

“Assidyus trees? Why don’t you talk United States while you’re about it, ‘n’ not fire yer long-range words round here? Assidyus! What does it mean, anyhow?”

“Can’t prove it by me. That’s what he called ‘em, ‘n’ I never forgot it.”

“Assidyus—assidyus—it don’t sound as if it meant nothing’, to me.”

“Assiduous means ‘busy,’” said the man from Tennessee, who had suddenly waked from a brown study, and dropped off into another as soon as he had given the definition.

“Busy, does it? Wall, I guess we ain’t no better off now ‘n we ever was. One tree’s ‘bout ‘s busy as another, as fur ‘s I can see.”

“Wall, there is kind of a meanin’ in it to me, but it’sturrible far fetched,” remarked Jabe Slocum, rather sleepily. “You see, our ellums and maples ‘n’ all them trees spends part o’ the year in buddin’ ‘n’ gittin’ out their leaves ‘n’ hangin’ em all over the branches; ‘n’ then, no sooner air they full grown than they hev to begin colorin’ of ‘em red or yeller or brown, ‘n’ then shakin’ ‘em off; ‘n’ this is all extry, you might say, to their every-day chores o’ growin’ ‘n’ cirkerlatin’ sap, ‘n’ spreadin’ ‘n’ thickenin’ ‘n’ shovin’ out limbs, ‘n’ one thing ‘n’ ‘nother; ‘n’ it stan’s to reason that the first ‘n’ hemlocks ‘n’ them California redwoods, that keeps their clo’es on right through the year, can’t be so busy as them that keeps a-dressin’ ‘n’ ondressin’ all the time.”

“I guess you’re ‘bout right,” allowed Steve, “but I shouldn’t never ‘a’ thought of it in the world. What yer takin’ out o’ that bottle, Jabe? I thought you was a temperance man.”

“I guess he ‘s like the feller over to Shandagee schoolhouse, that said he was in favor o’ the law, but agin its enforcement!” laughed Pitt Packard.

“I ain’t breakin’ no law; this is yarb bitters,” Jabe answered, with a pull at the bottle.

“It’s to cirkerlate his blood,” said Ob Tarbox; “he’s too dog-goned lazy to cirkerlate it himself.”

“I’m takin’ it fer what ails me,” said Jabe oracularly; “the heart knoweth its own bitterness, ‘n’ it ‘s a wise child that knows its own complaints ‘thout goin’ to a doctor.”

“Ain’t yer scared fer fear it’ll start yer growth, Laigs?” asked little Brad Gibson, looking at Jabe’s tremendous length of limb and foot. “Say, how do yer git them feet o’ yourn uphill? Do yer start one ahead, ‘n’ side-track the other?”

The tree rang with the laughter evoked by this sally, but the man from Tennessee never smiled.

Jabe Slocum’s imperturbable good humor was not shaken in the very least by these personal remarks. “If I thought ‘t was a good growin’ medicine, I’d recommend it to your folks, Brad,” he replied cheerfully. “Your mother says you boys air all so short that when you’re diggin’ potatoes, yer can’t see her shake the dinner rag ‘thout gittin’ up ‘n’ standing on the potato hills! If I was a sinikitin feller like you, I wouldn’t hector folks that had made out to grow some.”

“Speakin’ o’ growin’,” said Steve Webster, “who do you guess I seen in Boston, when I was workin’ there? That tall Swatkins girl from the Duck Pond, the one that married Dan Robinson. It was one Sunday, in the Catholic meetin’-house. I’d allers wanted to go to a Catholic meetin’, an’ I declare it’s about the solemnest one there is. I mistrusted I was goin’ to everlastin’ly giggle, but I tell yer I was the awedest cutter yer ever see. But anyway, the Swatkins girl—or Mis’ Robinson, she is now—was there as large as life in the next pew to me, jabberin’ Latin, pawin’ beads, gettin’ up ‘n’ kneelin’ down, ‘n’ crossin’ herself north, south, east, ‘n’ west, with the best of ‘em. Poor Dan! ‘Grinnin’ Dan,’ we used to call him. Well, he don’t grin nowadays. He never was good for much, but he ‘s hed more ‘n his comeuppance!”

“Why, what ‘s the matter with him? Can’t he git work in Boston?”

“Matter? Why, his wife, that I see makin’ believe be so dreadful pious in the Catholic meetin’, she ‘s carried on wuss ‘n the Old Driver for two years, ‘n’ now she ‘s up ‘n’ left him,—gone with a han’somer man.”

Down on Steve Webster’s hand came Jabe Slocum’s immense paw with a grasp that made him cringe.

“What the”—began Steve, when the man from Tennessee took up his scythe and slouched away from the group by the tree.

“Didn’t yer know no better ‘n that, yer thunderin’ fool? Can’t yer see a hole in a grindstun ‘thout it’s hung on yer nose?”

“What hev I done?” asked Steve, as if dumfounded.

“Done? Where ‘ve yer ben, that yer don’t know Dixie’s wife ‘s left him?”

“Where ‘ve I ben? Hain’t I ben workin’ in Boston fer a year; ‘n’ since I come home last week, hain’t I ben tendin’ sick folks, so ‘t I couldn’t git outside the dooryard? I never seen the man in my life till yesterday, in the field, ‘n’ I thought he was one o’ them dark-skinned Frenchies from Guildford that hed come up here fer hayin’.”

“Mebbe I spoke too sharp,” said Jabe apologetically; “but we ‘ve ben scared to talk wives, or even women folks, fer a month o’ Sundays, fer fear Dixie ‘d up ‘n’ tumble on his scythe, or do somethin’ crazy. You see it’s this way (I’d ruther talk than work; ‘n’ we ain’t workin’ by time to-day, anyway, on account of the circus comin’): ‘Bout a year ‘n’ a half ago, this tall, han’some feller turned up here in Pleasant River. He inhailed from down South somewheres, but he didn’t like his work there, ‘n’ drifted to New York, ‘n’ then to Boston; ‘n’ then he remembered his mother was a State o’ Maine woman, ‘n’ he come here to see how he liked. We didn’t take no stock in him at first,—we never hed one o’ that nigger-tradin’ secedin’ lot in amongst us,—but he was pleasant spoken ‘n’ a square, all-round feller, ‘n’ didn’t git off any secesh nonsense, ‘n’ it ended in our likin’ him first-rate. Wall, he got work in the cannin’ fact’ry over on the Butterfield road, ‘n’ then he fell in with the Maddoxes. You ‘ve hearn tell of ‘em; they’re relation to Pitt here.”

“I wouldn’t own ‘em if I met ‘em on Judgement Bench!” exclaimed Pitt Packard hotly. “My stepfather’s second wife married Mis’ Maddox’s first husband after he got divorced from her, ‘n’ that’s all there is to it; they ain’t no bloody-kin o’ mine, ‘n’ I don’t call ‘em relation.”

“Wall, Pitt’s relations or not, they’re all wuss ‘n the Old Driver, as yer said ‘bout Dan Robinson’s wife. Dixie went to board there. Mis Maddox was all out o’ husbands jest then,—she ‘d jest disposed of her fourth, somehow or ‘nother; she always hed a plenty ‘n’ to spare, though there’s lots o’ likely women folks round here that never hed one chance, let alone four. Her daughter Fidelity was a chip o’ the old block. Her father hed named her Fidelity after his mother, when she wa’n’t nothin’ but a two-days-old baby, ‘n’ he didn’t know how she was goin’ to turn out; if he ‘d ‘a’ waited two months, I believe I could ‘a’ told him. Infidelity would ‘a’ ben a mighty sight more ‘propriate; but either of ‘em is too long fer a name, so they got to callin’ her Fiddy. Wall, Fiddy didn’t waste no time; she was nigh onto eighteen years old when Dixie went there to board, ‘n’ she begun huneyfuglin’ him’s soon as ever she set eyes on him. Folks warned him, but ‘t wa’n’t no use; he was kind o’ bewitched with her from the first. She wa’n’t so han’some, neither. Blamed ‘f I know how they do it; let ‘em alone, ‘f yer know when yer ‘re well off, ‘s my motter. She was red-headed, but her hair become her somehow when she curled ‘n’ frizzed it over a karosene lamp, ‘n’ then wound it round ‘n’ round her head like ropes o’ carnelian. She hedn’t any particular kind of a nose nor mouth nor eyes, but gorry! when she looked at yer, yer felt kind as if yer was turnin’ to putty inside.”

“I know what yer mean,” said Steve interestedly.